


Black-eyed Dean

by bees_stories



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Harm, medical drama, mirror smashing, spoilers for series 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 10:23:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2147169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bees_stories/pseuds/bees_stories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Dean is seeing one of his worst nightmares, and it freaks him the hell out.<br/>A/N: A spoiler for season nine framed in a story set during season four. <br/>A/N 2: Written for the hurt_comfort bingo prompt: 'self harm' and a prompt I saw at 'hoodie_time', 'mirror smashing'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black-eyed Dean

***

It's been a long day. Sam is teetering on the brink of sleep, but the sound of shattering glass hauls him back from the edge and in a heartbeat he goes from drowsy and comfortable to harshly wide awake.

"Dean?" he calls out wearily. When there's no reply, Sam flips the blankets off of him and rolls out of bed. His gut instinct tells him that something isn't right. 

He turns on the bedside lamp and looks around. The room looks like a thousand other generic motel rooms, and Sam has to remind himself that they're in Mesa, Arizona, because there's nothing distinctive about the twin beds and sturdy but plain furniture to do it for him. Their stuff is scattered over various surfaces; clothes, computers, weapons bag, just as he'd left it when he'd turned in. There's only one thing out of place and that's the bottle of Jack sitting on the little table under the picture window. Sam sighs. Despite being specifically instructed to avoid alcohol for at least twenty-four hours, Dean's been drinking. 

There's a spill of light coming from the bathroom. Sam calls out, "Dean?" again and once again gets no reply. The feeling in his gut gets stronger. Something is definitely off. He crosses the room to investigate.

Dean is standing in front of what used to be the bathroom mirror. There are a few shards remaining in the frame, but most of the silvered glass is resting in the bathroom sink. He is clutching his right hand in the palm of his left. His eyes are tightly shut, and his shoulders are bowed inward, as if he's been struck in the gut and is anticipating another blow. 

Sam's not sure what to do. He decides maybe a little levity might lighten the situation. "If you were aiming for your face, you missed." 

The quip didn't sound that great in his head, and it sounded worse out loud. Not that it matters. Dean's so wrapped up in whatever is freaking him out he doesn't hear. 

"Dean! Hey, Dean!" Sam calls. He wants to make damn sure that his brother knows it's him before he gets any closer. 

"Is it gone?" Dean asks. 

"Is what gone?" Sam asks. His voice sounds sleep roughened in his own ears, like he's coming down with a cold. "Dean? Is what gone?"

Dean doesn't explain. He pivots sharply away from the mirror. "There was a demon. A demon in the mirror. I looked at it and I saw it, and I saw me."

"A demon?" Sam echoes numbly. "A demon, demon? How could you tell?"

Dean is agitated, heading into full on fight or flight mode. "Because I've seen'm without their meatsuits, Sammy, when I was downstairs. I know a demon when its ugly mug is staring back at me." 

The situation is getting seriously freaky. Dean is spooked and he's hurt. His knuckles, from where they impacted with the glass, are bleeding. Two jobs then; calm Dean down and patch him up. Very carefully, Sam edges forward. He puts his hand on Dean's shoulder and gives it a tentative pat. "Let's go in the other room. I'll clean up your hand." He glances at the sink full of glass. Dean's hand needs to be rinsed clean before it can be dressed and all the running water is in the bathroom. He turns on the faucet. "Lets get rid of the blood first." 

Dean looks down, as if he's noticing the damage for the first time. He nods. Sam tightens his grip and gently propels Dean close enough to get his hand under the stream of water. Red rivulets glint over silver and reflect upwards. It's sort of hypnotic, and Sam has to force himself to look away. He snags a washcloth and a towel off the rack next to the shower and then leads Dean out of the bathroom. "Sit there." He points at the table. "I'll get some stuff." 

Sam confiscates the bottle of Jack and puts it away before getting the first aid kit out of the weapons bag. He'd been given another bottle earlier, this one small and made of brown glass and shaped like something that could have once been found in an apothecary shop. He slips that into the pocket of his sweatpants, switches on the overhead lamp, and scoots the empty chair closer so they are sitting nearly heads together. Dean is still half out of it as Sam shines a flashlight over his busted hand looking for glass fragments. Luckily, there's nothing to see, so he dabs antibiotic ointment over the cuts and abrasions and then covers the whole mess with a gauze dressing to keep it clean until the wounds can scab over on their own.

"So who was it?" Sam asks when he's finished with his repairs. "This demon."

Dean looks up and his expression is resigned. "What color are my eyes, Sammy?"

Sam stares blankly at his brother for a second. "They're green, just like always. Why?"

Dean shakes his head. "They're black. I've got black eyes, Sammy." 

"No," Sam says as firmly as he can. "You don't. Your eyes are green. I promise you." The shaman's warning echoes in Sam's head. _What your brother wants to do is a dangerous thing. When you journey into the spirit world, time becomes … less linear. He may see memories of the past and even glimpses of potential futures, even after he returns to his body._

"Remember what the shaman said; you might see things, things that aren't real, especially if you had a drink. You're tripping, man, that's all. Your eyes aren't black. You're not possessed. And you're definitely not a demon." 

"How can you tell?" Dean says belligerently.

Sam shrugs. He goes to the weapons bag, pulls out a bottle of holy water and unscrews the cap. He dumps most of it over Dean's head and stands back anticipating the reaction. "There. Satisfied?" 

Dean sputters and wipes water out of his eyes. "So I took the brown LSD for nothing. We didn't learn anything to help us figure out a way to stop Lilith from breaking seals and I'm still tripping? Wonderful." 

Sam pulls the little brown bottle out of his pocket and dangles it in front of Dean. 

He looks at it suspiciously. "What's that?" 

"Hair of the dog." Sam squinches his face into a dissatisfied frown at the inaccurate description. "Well, more like brown LSD neutralizer. The shaman said if you did start to wig out that this would ground your soul back in your body. No more tripping." 

Dean snatches the bottle out of the air. He uncaps it, looks at it doubtfully for a second, and then he drinks it down in one long gulp. 

He gags, and then sputtering wildly, he blindly reaches for the half empty bottle of holy water and uses it for a chaser. 

"Damn," he swears when he can finally find the breath to do so. "That stuff tastes like ass." 

Now that sounded like Dean. Sam relaxes, convinced the worst was over. He is beat and Dean looks it too. He decides to leave the clean up for the morning and shuts out the lights. 

Dean sacks out almost as soon as his head hits the pillow. Sam stares up at the ceiling thinking about his brother's vision. "A demon?" he whispers. They fought demons. They occasionally worked with, and made deals with, demons. But become one? "No way." He shuts his eyes and makes a conscious decision that he won't have nightmares about a black-eyed Dean.

End


End file.
